JLPT N2 Vocabulary: How to Study 743 Kanji-Compound Flashcards (and Fix 5 Wrong Readings)

Deck VM5694 – JLPT N2 Vocabulary has 743 English → Japanese cards, each with kana, romaji and kanji (policy → せいさく (seisaku) — 政策). That format is useful. What's worth knowing before card 1 is how the list was built, because it isn't the official N2 list.

What's actually in the deck

• Cards 1-441, a thesaurus chain. Each English word leads to a related one: strategy → tactic → policy → regulation → legislation, then peak → apex → zenith → climax → culmination → pinnacle → acme. The themes are governance, law, organizations, conflict, science and ideas.
• Cards 442-743, an alphabetical list from aberration to crusade: 92 words in A, 36 in B, 175 in C, and it stops at "cr". So D-Z is missing.

The deck is English-driven. It includes words like acumen, avarice, celibacy, battalion, crucifixion and cosmology, while only 11 of the 743 cards are verbs. N2 reading passages turn on verbs and suru-compounds, so treat this deck as a strong kanji-compound (漢語) builder, not a complete N2 list.

Sample cards

Other words you'll meet: 貢献, 廃止, 違反, 義務, 権限, 自治権, 階層, 同盟, 連邦, 組合, 概念, 思想, 教義, 信仰, 保障, 境界, 国境, 挫折, 罰金, 物流, 基準, 定理, 抽出, 状況, 次元, 革命, 一貫性, 影響力, 文化遺産, 緩和, 覚醒, 衝突, 陰謀, 戴冠式.

Tip 1: fix the readings that don't match the kanji

On a few cards, the kana doesn't match the kanji printed next to it. Fix these before your first review:

• Card 21: 施行 is read しこう (shikou), not しっこう. That reading belongs to 執行 (card 5), and mixing up those two is a classic N2 trap.
• Card 440: the back says こうちょう — 絶頂. 絶頂 is read ぜっちょう.
• Card 456: the back says せんさい — 鋭敏. 鋭敏 is えいびん. せんさい is 繊細, which means "delicate".
• Card 576: 枢機卿 is read すうききょう.
• Card 42: the romaji for 命名法 should be meimeihou.

Tip 2: resolve the shared backs

About 30 Japanese answers appear on two or three cards. For example, 義務 is the answer to both obligation and duty, 保証 to both assurance and guarantee, and 対立 to three cards. Some glosses are also loose: legislation → 法律 (that means "law"), peer → 同級生 ("classmate"), community → 地域 ("area"). Keep the deck English → Japanese only. For each pair, add a one-line hint with a collocation that fits only one of the English words, e.g. 義務教育 = compulsory education.

Suspend the roughly 43 katakana cards (システム, プロセス, モデル) after one pass. You'll recognize them on sight.

Your path through the JLPT

The same format, with the same strengths and flaws, runs through JLPT N3 Vocabulary and JLPT N1 Vocabulary.

Open VM5694 – JLPT N2 Vocabulary in the library on Flip It.